Eric Denson murder trial - Live courtroom updates during day 3 of testimony

Eric Denson, 22, is charged with first degree murder and two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in the death of Conor Reynolds.

3:55 p.m. - District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni now questions Bryan again about how police dealt with her. She said police never tried to get her to identify Reynolds or to pressure her to say anything. Judge Velis ends the trial for the day after Bryan finishes testifying.

3:45 p.m. - Bryan said she first said the leather jacket had a logo on it. She said previously she said the man had a light gray hoodie, not charcoal gray or black. "Now you're saying today you don't know the color of the hoodie," Rountree said. "And they asked you about a hat and you told them you don't remember the guy wearing a hat," Rountree continued. Bryan agreed.

Rountree asked Bryan if she said in August at a hearing on the case blood was spurting from Reynolds wound. She said she did, but she doesn't know if it was spurting far.

"It was chaos everywhere, there was just a lot of kids," Bryan said about the time after the stabbing.

3:30 p.m. - She and others were questioned by police at the club and then she went to the police station, where she told police she didn't see the face of the man in the leather jacket. She told police the man had a hoodie under his jacket, but the hood was not pulled up.

She wasn't able to pick out from photographs at the police station the man in the black jacket. She saw the surveillance video from the Racing Market and said the black jacket on one of the men was familiar to her.

Defense lawyer David Rountree begins cross-examination. Bryan said she is not a professional security person but was just helping out because she knew Javaughn Griffin's sister. Bryan said two men were doing security at the door. Bryan said she didn't know people were drinking although her friend said some people were drinking. She said when the owner said to stop letting kids in there were people congregating outside. Kids were going in and out, there were no hand stamps, and she was not sure how anyone kept track of who had paid.

3:15 p.m. - Bryan said she saw the right arm of the man in the jacket make contact with Reynolds. She didn't know if it was a punch to Reynolds neck. "I don't know if he was pulled or he staggered back" Bryan said of the man in the black jacket. "I had yelled up to my friend Keandra to get all the kids out," she said.

Outside there were kids running everywhere. "I was with Conor...We put him on the floor between two cars." She told kids to back away. Reynold's girlfriend bent down to talk to him.

"I just told him he would be okay," she said. Reynolds was looking up at people "There was a lot of blood I didn't know where it was coming from." "His eyes were closed, we got scared," she said. They were telling him to wake up. His breathing was "kind of weak, I guess." She got blood on her watch, jewelry and other places from being close to Reynolds. Reynolds was moving her legs as he lay there, perhaps from pain, she said.

"It felt like forever," Bryan said of the time waiting for the ambulance.

2:40 p.m. - Bryant said she was a foot of two away from the man she later found out was Reynolds. She saw someone approach Reynolds wearing a black leather jacket. She never got a look at the man's face. She doesn't remember if he was wearing a hat.

Bryan said the jacket had texture and something was stamped on it. At this point defense lawyer David Rountree objects and a sidebar conference is called at the judge's bench. At the sidebar conferences the lawyers gather closely with the judge and all talk quietly so jurors and people in the courtroom can't hear.

When Mastroianni continues to ask Bryan about jacket designs, Rountree objects and asks for another sidebar. "You're coming over here a little too often, you need a better exercise routine," Velis said, but allows the sidebar conference.

2:25 p.m. - Trial resumes after lunch recess. Nicole Bryan is back on the stand. She said she went near the pool table and said "I don't care who's the one fighting," and told them to stop. She said her voice was raised over the music but she didn't think it was aggressive. "There were a whole bunch of people in my face," she said. "I didn't know what I had walked into or how intense the arguing was."

She said the tone of the people responding to her was loud and there were too many people in the area, but she did not feel the people were aggressive or threatening to her. She said the kids were in front of her, and there were kids taller than her.

1 p.m. - Prosecution calls Nicole Bryan, 25, who said she was one of six adults at the party. She said she was invited by Javaughn Griffin's sister to help at the party for Javaughn. Bryan said at one point she saw two people chasing each other and spoke to them, then heard an argument near the pool table. The trial has stopped for the lunch hour and will resume at 2 p.m.

12:35 p.m. - Trial resumes after the break. District Attorney Mastroianni begins re-direct examination of Michael Shea. Shea said he had never seen Denson before the stabbing. Shea said he did not pick Denson's picture out of a photo array in which Denson was included.

He said the red cap the man near Reynolds after the stabbing was wearing obscured the top part of his face. "I saw the blood as it was coming out," Shea said of Reynolds. Shea now said he was five feet from the man in the red hat, who was two feet from Reynolds.

He said he saw Eric Denson and no one else running toward the door.

Defense lawyer David Rountree takes over questioning. Shea said he identified the person in the Racing Mart still photograph by his jacket and cap as the person he had seen near Reynolds after the stabbing..

11:45 a.m. - Shea said there were a lot of people with blood on them at the club. He said people were running in all directions after the stabbing and there were people hanging out at the Racing Mart and other spots nearby. Shea had gone to the hospital with other friends and then called a friend to try to find out who did the stabbing. Cross-examination by Rountree ends, and the jury is given a break.

11:35 a.m. - Shea said he picked a person, who was not Denson, out of a photo array saying he looked like the person in the red hat who was near Denson.

Shea said he has seen Denson's picture on the internet repeatedly and knows where the defendant sits in the courtroom.

Shea said when people saw Reynolds bleeding profusely there was a frenzy, people started to scream and people were trying to push their way out of the club quickly. Shea said Reynolds was not involved in any fight.

Shea told police the second person he chased, who was with the man in the red hat, had a white cap and glasses. He acknowledged the second person in the Racing Mart photo had a blue, not a white, cap.

11:25 a.m. - Defense lawyer David Rountree begins cross-examination. Shea acknowledged there was a fight and he punched someone at the party hard. Shea said he had a couple shots of vodka in a car on the way to the party. He said in the club a man from Minnechaug High School was "hitting on" Channing Calcascola, and Cathedral students Peter D'Amario and James Dowd went up and told the man to stop. Another man from Minnechaug punched James Dowd in the face, Shea said.

Dowd was knocked down by the punch. Shea said he punched the man who punched Dowd and that man ran went out the club door. Shea turned around and realized Reynolds was bleeding. Reynolds was 20 or 25 feet from the outside door when stabbed.

Shea said he looked at the face of the man in the red hat who was two feet from Reynolds after the stabbing.

11:05 a.m. - Shea said he considered the clothes and height of the two people in the still photo from the Racing Mart to say they were the people he had chased. He said he did not see faces in that photo. The second person in the photo has not been identified in past hearings or today, and Denson is the only one charged in the killing.

Shea said he was also shown by police an array of photos of eight people showing faces and he could not identify anyone in the array as the person he had seen near Reynolds after the stabbing or had chased. Shea pointed to Denson in the courtroom as the person he had seen near Reynolds after the stabbing and the person he had chased.

10:50 a.m.: Shea said he stopped chasing the person with the red hat when that man turned around, with his hands in his pockets. Shea said it looked like the man was going to take his hands out of his jacket pockets but the man didn't take his hands out of the pockets.

Shea said the man asked why Shea was chasing him. Shea said at the police station he looked at a still photo from a surveillance tape at the Racing Mart near the club and said the man in the photo with the red hat was the man he was chasing. In past hearings on this case the man in the red hat in the Racing Mart video has been identified as Denson, because the surveillance tape shows the man getting into a certain car. Investigation of who was driving the car led to the knowledge, undisputed by the defense in hearings, Denson was the person getting into the car.

10:40 a.m. - Shea said when he was near Reynolds right after the stabbing no one but the man with the red hat was within arm's length of Reynolds. When Shea calls the person with the red hat he and two friends chased when they got outside of the bar "the stabber," the defense objected, saying Shea had just said he didn't see the stabbing. Velis agreed, striking Shea's use of "the stabber" from testimony. Shea said when he started chasing the man with the red hat, he said, "Come back here, you just stabbed my friend Conor."

10:35 a.m.: Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni has Michael Shea stand up and stand as close to him as Shea was to "the person with the red hat." Shea stood very close to Mastroianni, saying he was two feet away. Shea said Reynolds had just been stabbed when he was that close to the person with the red hat. Shea said he chased the person with the red hat. He said he had his hands on the man's shoulders for one second but could not hold on. He said the bouncer also had his hands on the same person. Shea did not see the stabbing or a knife, he said.

10:10 a.m. - Micheal Shea, 19, of Springfield, who began his testimony Friday, is brought to side of judge's bench to join the sidebar conference. Bringing a witness to a sidebar conference is unusual. Shea was a Cathedral High School student who was at the party.

10:05 a.m. - Sidebar conference at judge's bench continues, jury has not been brought into the courtroom yet, family and friends of Eric Denson sit quietly on one side of the courtroom behind defense table, family and friends of Conor Reynolds sit silently on other side of courtroom.

9:50 a.m. - Judge Peter A. Velis has come onto the bench and is talking to all lawyers in a private conference at the side of the bench.

9:00 a.m. - The murder trial of Eric B. Benson resumes this morning with the second day of testimony from Michael Shea, 19, of Springfield. Shea testified on Friday that he witnessed an assailant wearing a black leather jacket, red baseball hat and hooded sweatshirt slash Conor W. Reynolds’ neck at a birthday party at the Blue Fusion Bar & Grill after a fight broke out following an argument over the girlfriend of one of his Cathedral classmates.

Prosecutors contend that Denson, 22, of Carew Street, killed Reynolds in an unprovoked attack during a March 13, 2010 birthday party held for a Cathedral student.

The defendant is charged with first degree murder and two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. In opening arguments Thursday, District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni said DNA evidence, surveillance video from the convenience store, and witness testimony will establish Denson’s guilt.